How automation tech can cut through marketing noise

The World Cup is huge and reaches an audience of billions worldwide. There may be some grumblings among fans about this year’s competition being played in the winter, but it remains a massive opportunity for sportsbook operators to engage their customers with 64 high-profile matches.

While this is great for football fans like me, it presents a real creative and operational challenge for sportsbook marketers tasked with displaying the market prices for hundreds of thousands of matches online as part of their customer acquisition strategies.

Automation technology is changing the dynamic of digital marketing. Traditionally, display advertising in the betting industry has relied on formulaic, static creative, which must be manually configured, uploaded and updated to reflect the latest developments in markets. It’s an outdated and resource-heavy process that we estimate costs the industry two months in lost productivity annually. It’s an issue that 67% of our betting operator clients have complained about and we’re increasingly seeing them turn to automation to improve the scale and efficiency of their marketing activities.

Programmatic advertising, which automates the buying of online advertising in real time, is easing the operational load, removing the need for operators to do it manually. Programmatic is hyper-targeted and user centric, truly serving the right content to the right customer. This increased advert relevance makes content more engaging for customers, optimising performance across the acquisition funnel via higher click through-rates (CTR) and increased purchase intent.

Buying digital advertising programmatically can deliver a positive return on investment for operators. In fact, one of our global gaming operator clients, Coolbet, reported a 60% reduction in cost per acquisition (CPA) for programmatic advertising activity and a 110% increase in net gaming revenue (NGR) for those programmatic campaigns.

Personalised ads

There have also been significant developments in the automation of the adverts themselves and one technology I believe this will transform digital marketing for sportsbook operators is Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO).

Using the latest artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, DCO utilises data to engineer personalised advertising creative, based on customer insight, intent and context. By processing millions of weekly ad impressions, real-time adverts are generated based on individual customer interests and browsing behaviour, as well as the most prominent content on an operator’s website. This enhances the user journey for individual customers, delivering higher click-through-rates and boosted campaign performance, while also aligning with the brand standards of clients.

For marketers who need to supply creative adverts for the hundreds of thousands of matches played globally each week, this creative technology automatically generates an unlimited supply of advert variations. Single templates can deliver thousands of creatives at speed, helping operators to scale their marketing activities quickly and effectively.

Critically, AI can be configured to automate customer acquisition strategies that meet the needs of an operator’s marketing objectives. Campaign strategies can be set for prospecting and retargeting, which connects brands with new fans and re-engages existing customers. For global operators, geo-filtering allows them to regionalise their content and deliver campaigns that are powered by local insights and trends. Additionally, there is a flexible configuration to display only LiveOdds, pre-match odds or both market types in creative form. Providing operators with the tools to automate strategic and highly targeted campaigns in this way is extremely powerful.

In a season touted as one of football’s most important in years and with the World Cup expected to drive a record number of bets, automation technology is alleviating operational pressures and optimising advertising performance for sportsbooks, providing them with game-changing advantages in a competitive market.

Florian Geheeb is part of the Sportradar ad:s management team, where he looks after all commercial aspects of the unit, including media sales, sponsorship sales and client success. He manages senior relationships with operators and rights holders as well as internal stakeholders. Geheeb joined Sportradar in February 2018 and since then has supported the company to found, grow and establish Sportradar ad:s, the company’s digital marketing service.